Paul Gallen is standing inside a toilet cubicle with his best mate Hoges.
Above his left eye, a large welt.
A reddened souvenir which, set to become much blacker an hour from now, has been gifted on this most unusual of Thursday evenings by an accidental headbutt from Ben Hannant.
“Happened with 20 seconds to go, too,” Gallen had told us earlier from his dressing room deep inside Brisbane’s Nissan Arena, a large ice pack pressed tight against his melon.
“I went back to my corner, saw blood and thought ‘oh, shit’. Then when the referee came over to check me, I thought I’d been split.
“Even Justin Hodges said later he saw it on a TV in his dressing room and started stressing our fight would be off. I was stressing too.”
But Gallen, thankfully, is a little like Predators.
Rarely bleeds.
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Which brings us, right now, back to that cramped dressingroom toilet cubicle.
With Gal, one fight down, and another coming up, using said brasco for that same nervous leak taken by so many fighters just moments before making the walk.
Problem is, you’re gloved up.
Which is when a fella like Scotty Hogan – who Gallen has known since age six – makes for a fairly, err, handy mate.
Although during this particular visit, things go in a way they never have on more than a dozen other fight nights.
Sure, the NSW Origin great has still undertaken many of his usual rituals like drinking Red Bull, eating bananas and, sometime between bouts, opening a packet of Allens Snakes for “my first lollie in six weeks”.
Splayed open on one bench, is his Cronulla footy bag. Beside that, the oversized, black Beats he wore while, on a chair flipped backwards, and completely emotionless, his hands were wrapped.
In fact, the only noticeable difference between this night and all those others preceding it is the presence of not one, but two sets of gloves.
But inside that cubicle, Hoges sees something new too.
“Gal, I can see your f***ed,” the fighter recalls his friend of over 30 years telling him.
“So mate, you need to find something.
“I can see you’re struggling but f*** you need to get up … find something.”
To which, Gallen replies: “Hoges, I’ll find it.”
And you know what happens from there, right?
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With Gallen, soon after, knocked down and almost out by a thudding Justin Hodges punch that few outside his immediate family were tipping.
Easy night?
No, suddenly Gal is crawling on all fours — for a moment dazed, and suffering blurred vision – before then rising like Lazarus to not only come clear, or recover, but win it all himself just one round later.
Exactly as he promised.
“But I was f***ed,” Gallen will tell us later that night of the knock down. When dressed in civvies, and with beer in hand, he stands alone in a shed that has finally cleared of well wishers.
“That was the first time I’ve been dropped, or been really dropped … and I was f***ed.”
But inside that cubicle, Gallen had promised he would find something.
Just as moments later, and as part of his final warm up, the 41-year-old sparred lightly with son Kody who this night has swelled the famously tight Gallen entourage to seven.
So say what you like about this polarising crossover fighter – plenty do – but know that away from the baying crowds and whirring cameras, away from the headlines and press conference theatrics, this was largely a night about a father and his boy.
Asked if he thought of son Kody, over in his corner, while scrambling like a drunkard to find his feet, his vision, all of it, Gallen replies: “Nah, out there I’m in a different world.
“A world I never want my son to be part of. And one that I’ve now had enough of.”
Is that why you brought him tonight?
“I brought him because he’s been asking for ages,” the fighter continues. “But I never wanted it.
“I don’t want Kody seeing his dad get booed. I don’t want him seeing his dad get hit.
“I can’t imagine that.”
Yet just like every fighter needs a mate like Hoges, so we reckon Gal needed his boy this night.
Same deal his trainer Graham Shaw, who exists among the handful of people who knew just how much Gallen struggled through this most recent fight camp.
Which isn’t to say the old Cronulla Sharkie is tired of fighting.
No, Gal will forever be up for a stink.
“But the sparring … it’s shit.”
Yet because he has continued to do it all anyway, because of Hoges, because of Shaw and son Kody, because of those other handful of mates with him this night, Gallen goes and gets up when most others would stay down.
Which is why, afterwards, Hodgo will walk into this same shed, grab a beer, and then pull on a NSW jersey. Just as he had promised.
Same as not long after, Hannant does the same.
This nod among athletes part of a dressing room that, packed for a while, will finally clear out again to those handful of closest friends.
Which is when, this time, it is Shaw, a fella who speaks with all the brevity of a man expecting to be charged twenty bucks per word, goes and does just that.
“You know 12 months ago what you would’ve done to those guys,” he tells Gallen.
“Yeah, I know,” the fighter replies.
To which the trainer then mentions Father Time, about him coming for everyone, and how no matter the incentives tossed up to keep throwing, Gal now rematches Hodgo for what has to be his farewell.
Then, it’s suggested, he can go find other ways to win.
